Identifying needs and planning support
A child or young person with SEND will receive special educational provision, which means they have support to help them manage in school, and make progress.
The support your child receives will depend on their individual needs. This can look different in different schools, and for individual children and it may change over time as your child grows and develops. Support should be needs-led rather than diagnosis-led, meaning that schools should work together with you to identify the needs and barriers to learning, and put appropriate support in place, rather than wait for a diagnosis from an external service.
‘Support’ is anything that will help a child or young person achieve their full learning potential, and could include simple adjustments in the classroom such as using visuals, seating position, larger font, adapted resources or a short sensory or movement break. Some children may require some additional support through small group teaching or specific interventions such as speech and language therapy or emotional support. Others may need some additional time with an adult in school, specialist equipment or a more bespoke curriculum. The school can also request support from specialist education and health services, for example, educational psychology, advisory teachers, or speech and language therapy.
A graduated approach to SEND support
Your child’s school should work together with the you, and your child, to identify needs, and agree the outcomes, actions and support to be in place to meet these needs. A record of this should be shared with the parents. This may be through an Individual Support Plan.
Once the plan has been agreed upon, your child’s teacher will work with teaching assistants or specialist staff to put it into action. They will make sure everyone is aware of your child’s needs and the plan’s aims, and will continually consider how helpful the support is.
You should be offered to meet with your child’s teacher three times a year (this will include parent’s evenings) to discuss how effective the support has been, review progress and adapt the plan if necessary, for example, if your child’s needs have changed, or the support needs to change because they’re not making reasonable progress or you’re unhappy with the support.
This continual cycle of ‘assess, plan, do, review’ helps make sure that the support is working. It’s known as the graduated approach.
- Assess – any additional support needs should be identified by reviewing the child or young person’s strengths, difficulties and any barriers to learning
- Plan – the additional support needed should be planned (including expected outcomes, and timescales)
- Do – the planned support should be put into place
- Review – progress against identified outcomes should be reviewed
If your child or young person is making good progress then further targeted support may not be needed. They will continue to be supported through Ordinarily Available Inclusive Provision. If they are not making the progress expected progress, the cycle should start again, with a new plan made, and different support and strategies tried.
Ordinarily available targeted support
Additional ‘targeted’ support is sometimes needed where children and young people need more personalised and planned support to enable them to make progress. This includes those who have been identified as having SEND.
Specialist support
For some children and young people specialist help and support may be needed. Pupils may have life-long learning difficulties or disabilities, across several areas of development, and will require more specialist intervention.